A Great Start to 2016

Well here it is nearly at the end of January and I am finally doing a blog post for 2016. Believe it or not I have not been away on holiday or just putting my feet up doing nothing. I have been working flat out on a new art quilt.

About 18 months ago Brenda Gael Smith announced the theme for her upcoming exhibition and the theme was A Matter of Time- exploring the fourth dimension. As the months went by I thought of all sorts of ideas of quilts I could make that explored the theme. Some ideas were too obvious and others seemed too hard to tackle. I even spent a week working on an idea last October but it didn't work out and certainly didn't look anything like the idea I had in my head. To my disappointment I decided that I would not be making a quilt for the exhibition.

On Christmas Eve I thought of making a quilt about how old the coral reefs were. Bear in mind that this was 3 weeks before the deadline. The only way I could possibly try and get it done on time was because I had made an underwater quilt earlier in the year. I had still kept all my inspirational photos and fabrics in a box on their own. You can read all about my quilt Under the Sea here.

Once the idea took hold I was off and running. The size was the same as my previous quilt but I didn't want to make the same quilt, in fact there were lots of things I didn't like about the first one.

Here is my quilt named Life on the Reef and I finished it the day before the deadline! If you click on the photo it enlarges.

I was so busy trying to get it done that at times I thought I would run out of time, which was ironic seeing as that was the theme.

Here are a couple of detail photos.

The entire time I was making the quilt I was wondering why I put myself under all the pressure, but even though it was a lot of pressure I was also having fun. That's why we do it I suppose, it's because we love it.

Last week I found out that my quilt was selected to be in the exhibition!! I was absolutely thrilled because it is an art quilt exhibition and even though I dabble in art quilts I am known as a traditional quilter. There were 104 quilts entered and only 32 were selected. I have seen some of the quilts that were not accepted and they are fantastic. Brenda must have had such a difficult job to choose the quilts that went together to make a cohesive display.

You can see the other people who were selected by clicking onto Brenda's A Matter of Time Blog, she also has a dedicated Facebook and Instagram page for the exhibition.

The quilts will first be displayed at the Stitches and Craft Show in Sydney and Brisbane and then they will come to the Quilt Convention in Melbourne (AQC) before travelling to other locations. I can't wait to see the exhibition.

Bye for now,
Linda